5 ms·

Honestly, this is the really offensive part of the article. Who cares about whether or not it's legal, the idea that it's, in any way, shape, or form, useful is

Honestly, this is the really offensive part of the article. Who cares about whether or not it's legal, the idea that it's, in any way, shape, or form, useful is bafflingly laughable. Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Not everything needs to be.

capableweb 3y ago
> Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Not everything needs to be. Ok, so who decides what's OK to analyze or not? Is there some obvious moral line I fail to see, that everyone would immediately agree on? It seems the project was about analyzing books, not about producing new books. How is that hurting the authors?
- LikelyABurner 3y ago
  What will hurt artists is, when in 10 years, all publishers are demanding that the vividness score (TM) be at least a 95% “because that’s what drives sales”. Which is what will happen if the authors don’t proactively stop it from happening. Look at how the music industry has evolved over time.
  - runj__ 3y ago
    Or it could help me find terser books I like, people will still have preferences and if the author tries to pander to only the largest market segment I'd argue that's on them.
    - jprete 3y ago
      I think it’s much more likely you would get the book equivalent of crap SEO sites spammed out to satisfy numerical measures of quality.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    How is this different to the current process, other than feedback is slower (if forthcoming at all) and less specific?
    - palata 3y ago
      > How is this different to the current process, other than feedback is slower (if forthcoming at all) and less specific? Let me rephrase your question: "how is it different to the current process, other than <the fact that it is different>?" :-). I would say that the answer lies in the question.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Sounds as though your view of the AI is purely positive, in that case. That's fair enough. The answer for other people may well not lie in the question (e.g. for all the people who don't like this development), but it did for you!
        palata 3y ago
        Sorry I did not understand that :-). My point was that it is different: when humans read a book, they don't train a machine learning model. They can't read as many books as a machine, at the same speed, and they can't remember nearly as much as what a machine can. Humans and computers are fundamentally different, and it matters. You can't conclude that because it works for one, it will fork for the other.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        > Sorry I did not understand that :-) You seemed to be saying that the differences I listed (quicker and more specific feedback) were the only differences. Those are both positive. I was saying that some people may think there are negative differences as well.
        palata 3y ago
  - croes 3y ago
    How his this different from all the vampire novels that hit the shelf after the success of Twilight? Publishers alway preferred the money makers, just the measure changed. Nowadays writers can at least publish their books without the need of publishers and I think some like the help of the bad Silicon valley stuff that made writing, publishing and interacting with the readers easier. I'm on your site if it's about automatic content creation and style copying but text analysis is not the real danger. Especially when the usefulness of such statistics isn't even given.
    - nottorp 3y ago
      > publish their books without the need of publishers Except those are very likely to be metoo vampire novels. And lately LLM generated. I'd move that on the contrary, the role of the publisher as a curator will only become more important in the future.
      - croes 3y ago
        But publishers will have to deal with a lot more content thanks to LLMs.
- Nullabillity 3y ago
  Again, I don't particularly care about whether this is allowed to exist, I'm just here to laugh at the mindset that lead to it being created. But sure, I can see this being used in harmful ways. > It seems the project was about analyzing books, not about producing new books. How is that hurting the authors? "Vivid books are really in this year, we're gonna have to ask that you aim for a Vividness(tm) of 85 or above." "US books have 15% more adjectives, clearly this is proof of our superior detail-oriented work ethic!" "What does the rise in Emotion(tm) have to say about the decline of society?"
  - capableweb 3y ago
    So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that we should not create "metrics" for anything because said metrics could be misused by clueless people?
runj__ 3y ago
Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? "Hm, this three act structure thing seems to work, I wonder why." "Children doesn't seem to understand texts which include these words, I wonder why." Patterns rarely show themselves before we investigate.
- Nullabillity 3y ago
  > Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? In science they call this trap P-hacking. Even data "scientists" know to be wary of overfitting. We're really good at finding patterns, but few of them actually mean anything.
  - davorak 3y ago
    >> Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? > In science they call this trap P-hacking. Even data "scientists" know to be wary of overfitting. We're really good at finding patterns, but few of them actually mean anything. Quantifying things is not always p-hacking. When people do experiments on novel materials or structures they quantify the data, make readings and record them, and then look for patterns. For example measuring the electronic properties of a new novel nano structure or molecule. When I think of p-hacking[1] I think of using the same static data and doing various data analysis over and over again until something potentially interesting is found and ignoring the risks of false positives as you do so. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging
dmurray 3y ago
The analysis is cool. The problematic thing is what would have happened next, if this tool turned out to be any good. Publishers rejecting manuscripts because "this years trend shows customers are looking for vividness in the 70+ percentile, your book is only at 55". Everything becoming the same style. If you thought Hemingway, Joyce or Nabokov had it bad with rejections, there'd be zero chance for actual innovative writing to break through the walls of The Algorithm.
- fullspectrumdev 3y ago
  Joyce should have had more rejections, but that’s just my personal opinion
TheCoreh 3y ago
> Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Sure, but written words _can_ be meaningfully quantified. We have been doing that for thousands of years. Starting with numerology and other mystical/religious beliefs, poem metrics, stylometry, crypto analysis, stroke counting, to name a few. > Not everything needs to be. Why not?
pikahumu 3y ago
If you don't find it useful, don't use it. But why get outraged about something that others find useful? It's clearly a tool that other writers were positive and excited about. Why not let them have it? If you don't find those quantifications meaningful, so be it. You don't need to use it. Why force your opinion on others?
- r053bud 3y ago
  Simple. Just allow an opt-out for Authors or Publishers. Then only interested parties will comprise of and make use of the service, like you want.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
andybak 3y ago
> Honestly, this is the really offensive part of the article. I would argue that "Offensive" is either hyperbolic or you've used the wrong word. > the idea that it's, in any way, shape, or form, useful is bafflingly laughable. I don't know if it's useful because I never tried it. I might harbour my doubts but I'd like to find out. This is how I approach new things.

capableweb 3y ago

> Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Not everything needs to be. Ok, so who decides what's OK to analyze or not? Is there some obvious moral line I fail to see, that everyone would immediately agree on? It seems the project was about analyzing books, not about producing new books. How is that hurting the authors?

LikelyABurner 3y ago
What will hurt artists is, when in 10 years, all publishers are demanding that the vividness score (TM) be at least a 95% “because that’s what drives sales”. Which is what will happen if the authors don’t proactively stop it from happening. Look at how the music industry has evolved over time.
- runj__ 3y ago
  Or it could help me find terser books I like, people will still have preferences and if the author tries to pander to only the largest market segment I'd argue that's on them.
  - jprete 3y ago
    I think it’s much more likely you would get the book equivalent of crap SEO sites spammed out to satisfy numerical measures of quality.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  How is this different to the current process, other than feedback is slower (if forthcoming at all) and less specific?
  - palata 3y ago
    > How is this different to the current process, other than feedback is slower (if forthcoming at all) and less specific? Let me rephrase your question: "how is it different to the current process, other than <the fact that it is different>?" :-). I would say that the answer lies in the question.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Sounds as though your view of the AI is purely positive, in that case. That's fair enough. The answer for other people may well not lie in the question (e.g. for all the people who don't like this development), but it did for you!
      - palata 3y ago
        Sorry I did not understand that :-). My point was that it is different: when humans read a book, they don't train a machine learning model. They can't read as many books as a machine, at the same speed, and they can't remember nearly as much as what a machine can. Humans and computers are fundamentally different, and it matters. You can't conclude that because it works for one, it will fork for the other.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        > Sorry I did not understand that :-) You seemed to be saying that the differences I listed (quicker and more specific feedback) were the only differences. Those are both positive. I was saying that some people may think there are negative differences as well.
        palata 3y ago
- croes 3y ago
  How his this different from all the vampire novels that hit the shelf after the success of Twilight? Publishers alway preferred the money makers, just the measure changed. Nowadays writers can at least publish their books without the need of publishers and I think some like the help of the bad Silicon valley stuff that made writing, publishing and interacting with the readers easier. I'm on your site if it's about automatic content creation and style copying but text analysis is not the real danger. Especially when the usefulness of such statistics isn't even given.
  - nottorp 3y ago
    > publish their books without the need of publishers Except those are very likely to be metoo vampire novels. And lately LLM generated. I'd move that on the contrary, the role of the publisher as a curator will only become more important in the future.
    - croes 3y ago
      But publishers will have to deal with a lot more content thanks to LLMs.
Nullabillity 3y ago
Again, I don't particularly care about whether this is allowed to exist, I'm just here to laugh at the mindset that lead to it being created. But sure, I can see this being used in harmful ways. > It seems the project was about analyzing books, not about producing new books. How is that hurting the authors? "Vivid books are really in this year, we're gonna have to ask that you aim for a Vividness(tm) of 85 or above." "US books have 15% more adjectives, clearly this is proof of our superior detail-oriented work ethic!" "What does the rise in Emotion(tm) have to say about the decline of society?"
- capableweb 3y ago
  So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that we should not create "metrics" for anything because said metrics could be misused by clueless people?

runj__ 3y ago

Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? "Hm, this three act structure thing seems to work, I wonder why." "Children doesn't seem to understand texts which include these words, I wonder why." Patterns rarely show themselves before we investigate.

Nullabillity 3y ago
> Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? In science they call this trap P-hacking. Even data "scientists" know to be wary of overfitting. We're really good at finding patterns, but few of them actually mean anything.
- davorak 3y ago
  >> Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? > In science they call this trap P-hacking. Even data "scientists" know to be wary of overfitting. We're really good at finding patterns, but few of them actually mean anything. Quantifying things is not always p-hacking. When people do experiments on novel materials or structures they quantify the data, make readings and record them, and then look for patterns. For example measuring the electronic properties of a new novel nano structure or molecule. When I think of p-hacking[1] I think of using the same static data and doing various data analysis over and over again until something potentially interesting is found and ignoring the risks of false positives as you do so. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging

dmurray 3y ago

The analysis is cool. The problematic thing is what would have happened next, if this tool turned out to be any good. Publishers rejecting manuscripts because "this years trend shows customers are looking for vividness in the 70+ percentile, your book is only at 55". Everything becoming the same style. If you thought Hemingway, Joyce or Nabokov had it bad with rejections, there'd be zero chance for actual innovative writing to break through the walls of The Algorithm.

fullspectrumdev 3y ago
Joyce should have had more rejections, but that’s just my personal opinion

TheCoreh 3y ago

> Not everything can be meaningfully quantified. Sure, but written words _can_ be meaningfully quantified. We have been doing that for thousands of years. Starting with numerology and other mystical/religious beliefs, poem metrics, stylometry, crypto analysis, stroke counting, to name a few. > Not everything needs to be. Why not?

pikahumu 3y ago

If you don't find it useful, don't use it. But why get outraged about something that others find useful? It's clearly a tool that other writers were positive and excited about. Why not let them have it? If you don't find those quantifications meaningful, so be it. You don't need to use it. Why force your opinion on others?

r053bud 3y ago
Simple. Just allow an opt-out for Authors or Publishers. Then only interested parties will comprise of and make use of the service, like you want.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

andybak 3y ago

> Honestly, this is the really offensive part of the article. I would argue that "Offensive" is either hyperbolic or you've used the wrong word. > the idea that it's, in any way, shape, or form, useful is bafflingly laughable. I don't know if it's useful because I never tried it. I might harbour my doubts but I'd like to find out. This is how I approach new things.